Baby tench...

[The Runner]

Never seen so many.
Had a mini working party at one of our lakes today with a boat and two drags, clearing 6' wide channels in front of half a dozen swims.

Had to reallocate the division of labour to two in the boat, two pulling the rope, two clearing the previous drag and two sorting through the weed to return all the mini-tench to the lake. Every drag producing at least a couple of dozen around an inch long, presumably this years spawning, and almost as many of 3 to 4 inches, presumably last years.

In 40 years of fishing, never seen more than a tiny number of tench that small. Must have been a couple of really good spawning years- anyone else noticed this ?

[richard e.]

sounds like this place is going to be red hot in a few years time.

tench are probably my favourite fish and i have spent years fishing for them and still do.

its nice to hear that they have a stronghold in your waters. my local pond has many, some around the 10lb barrier . but ive yet to catch one. the last time i noticed i was catching numbers of baby tench must have been in the mid 80's.

[tk]

Theres a few 'surprised' anglers down our canal this year as a number of 4-6 inch tench are making an appearance - you usually don't see any tench from the canal smaller than the 1lb+ mark - as Richard E says, it augers well for the future

[fish farmer]

tk, I fished the curly wryley most my life til I moved to worcesteer and there were only a couple of years when we caught small tench like the ones you describe. Tench grow very slowly and those fish will be a couple of years old, so it seems that 2007 was good year for survival of the little tincas !

[pellet waggler guy]

caught my first tench bout a week ago. 2-3lbs so much bigger than the ones you say you caught

[Avonman]

How come most tench caught in matches on natural venues usually 2-3lb+, why don't we catch tiddlers? On the Avon this year all the tench caught this year have averaged 4-6lb, is this a result of a good spawning year a decade ago or something like that?